From euphoria to doom — and do you think we should be optimistic or pessimistic?

Even though I haven’t been writing as much, I have kept up with my reading. Indeed, keeping up with my reading is part of why I haven’t been writing. There’s so much doom and gloom out there, I feel a little too oppressed to write.

One of the doomy and gloomy thoughts is that, even though Obama ought to be the perfectly beatable candidate, Republicans are once again snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. (Jay Cost, as always, explains things well.)

I understand that conservatives are shying away from optimism, which can easily shade into dangerous hubris. Pessimism is a safer place to be. If you win, you’re pleasantly surprised. If you lose, well, you knew it was coming. What I fear, though, is pessimism can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, one that isn’t helped by the fact that the Republican candidates are engaged in a suicidal massacre while Obama goes around looking pretty in a suit.

Its early days yet, but I’d be very interested in your thoughts about the coming election. Are you inclined to cautious optimism? Do you think the naysayers are correct? Should we stop worrying regardless because of that Mayan calendar thingy?

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I see the Republicans doing their typical thing — being “nice” in order not to be excoriated by the media. Completely false hope, of course….but they don’t seem to learn.

My fear is that they’re going to lose the eminently winnable Presidential election in 2012, and that the wussy actions by leadership may produce a loss of the House and a failure to capture the Senate.

Of course, living in California means that I’ll have almost nothing to do with who the nominee is (or with the composition of the House and Senate), except for contributing my small sums to various individual campaigns, which I continue to do.

That, and pray.

jj

I am mightily opposed to the way this year’s selection process has been run. All these absurd “debates” have been a disaster to the concept of actually choosing a candidate. What they’ve accomplished is to allow people who have no right to be there to remain alive and well and gumming up the process for far too long. Part of the campaign is that it’s an early test of your executive skills: you’re required to round up money and a competent staff and organize in every state. Now you can just show up and run your mouth: no money, no staff, no brains needed. You’re just as viable as a serious candidate (yeah, yeah, I know – they’re all serious), and you don’t need to do anything, or organize anything to make yourself a viable candidate, as opposed to an asshole with time to kill, a big mouth, and a gigantic ego. We have several of those.

I’ve said before we’re not choosing an archangel. Fact is, we’re not choosing a debater, either. The president of the United States does not debate, that’s a skill that’s almost entirely irrelevant to the job. I don’t give a damn who “wins” any “debate.” Rick Perry is the longest serving governor of the most successful state in the union during very bad times – but he’s an also-ran because he can’t work his mouth properly when on stage? I don’t give a $%#&! I’m not hiring him for that. Romney introduced a 59 point economic plan explaining in detail how we get out of the current mess – does anybody know the first goddam thing about it? Have any of these “moderators” asked about it, or offered him more than a minute to him to explain it? Of course not, this idiot format loves crap like “9-9-9,” which fits easily into it and doesn’t require any explanation. Bachman, Huntsman, and Santorum are the most reliably conservative people in this goddam circus – they’ve got no chance because Gingrich is a better debater and Romney’s the GOP choice? This is among the most brainless exercises I think I’ve ever seen that’s termed “adult behavior.” (I’ve watched every single one of these “debates” and don’t know a thing about what anyone on stage would do – those with serious plans to address serious issues can’t boil it down to one minute. Everything I know I’ve had to find and read outside this “process.” It is completely unhelpful.

And of course when you spend months and months attacking each other and you finally do come up with a candidate, the smear machine on the other side starts out with a full quiver of ammunition, for which they don’t even have to pay opposition researchers – the GOP’s giving it to them free. As Romney says, if you can’t take the heat here, what are you going to when the professional assholes get going on you? (Yeah, Mitt, and you have yet to give an answer a conservative can stomach or regard as coherent about your goddamed health crap in Massachusetts, so yes indeedy: what are you going to say when the Chicago thug machine frames the question and throws it at you?)

Obama has been a disaster. He is easily the worst president of my lifetime, a title I thought Carter would hold forever. He brings a bucket-load of arrogance to go along with his Carteresque ineptitude, and other than getting himself elected with the help of the dirtiest political machinery in the country I don’t know what the snotty little son of a bitch actually knows how to do. Certainly there’s no evidence that he knows how to run anything. I look at him and I think in a world wherein there was some evidence of brains he’s not only beatable – he’s land-slidable. He shouldn’t be defeated, he should be destroyed. He should be flung down and danced on by the American electorate – he shouldn’t even be a viable candidate with the mess he’s made.

But he’s not only viable, he’s probably going to win. The only way the republicans can win these days is to do it so big it can’t be stolen. If it’s close, the thug party will steal it, and right now it’s way too close, so much closer than it ought to be with a sitting target like Obama. A walking dead duck, a disaster from beginning to end, and I see no reason whatever for cautious optimism, let alone the heart filled with rejoicing that I ought to be enjoying right about now. The Shoot Yourself in the Foot Party has managed to do it again, with these endless “debates.” It hasn’t properly started yet, and they’ve already managed to so cripple themselves so badly that we’ll lose.

The rest of the republicans in America are in the same boat as Earl. They won’t have much to do with who wins the Republican nomination either. GOP allies of the Left, along with Democrats, are going to vote in that.

Or did people actually think… the LEft was going to obey little things like primary election results when they are already riding over the US Constitution?

11B40

Greetings:

I’m afraid that the needle on my upsetometer is way over on the doom end of the spectrum.

While so many seem obsessed by the upcoming Presidential race, even if Republicans are successful in it and win both houses of Congress, the “Long March through the Institutions” will continue. Bureaucracies at all levels of government will remain populated by leftist, progressive adherents who will take every opportunity to continue their malfeasances. When I see what the US Department of Justice is getting away with these days, what bit of optimism can be nurtured. The “Rule of Law” has become the “Ruler’s Law” and those who love their misguided ideologies more than they love their Constitution will remain in their abusable positions.

If you don’t already read the “Protein Wisdom” blog, don’t start; unless, of course, you need another heartache.

I always keep telling people, even if you beat Obama at the next elections, you still haven’t beat the Left, the real threat to humanity.

SADIE

“Perhaps Communists had wormed their way so deeply into our government on both the working and planning levels that they were able to exercise an inordinate degree of power in shaping the course of America in the dangerous postwar era.
I could not help wondering and worrying whether we were faced with open enemies across the conference table and hidden enemies who sat with us in our most secret councils.” – General Mark Clark (1896-1984) American general during World War II and the Korean War

SADIE

Consider that between 1951 and 2000, the American economy grew by an average of 37 percent every decade. Between 2001 and 2010, the pace of growth was less than half that, at just 15 percent.

Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Appalling stats from the last decade and the cause is two-fold. The economic jihad created by September 11th (external including the USS Cole and the Embassy bombings in Africa) and the economic jihad created by the housing bubble (internal). They were both preventable and both remain a threat.

Republicans have a death wish. They have adopted the view that, since no matter what they do the MSM is going to trash them, they might as well take politically suicidal positions and hand the election to Obama and the Democrats. For example — is is so important to us that we not raise taxes on millionaires that we’d rather shut down the government than do it. Then — it is so important to us that we not raise taxes on millionaires that we’d rather deny the continuation of a tax break for the middle class. No matter how correct these positions are economically, they cannot be sold to the voters, even if the Republicans had a sympathetic media. Insanity.

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